Airmen at Langley Air Force Base frequently face investigations, flags, or UCMJ charges. Langley experiences a high volume of military justice activity due to its size and location. As the headquarters for the 633d Air Base Wing and key components of Air Combat Command, Langley supports high-level operations tied to airpower readiness and rapid deployment.
Langley is located in Hampton, Virginia, on the southeastern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic. It shares boundaries with the historic city of Hampton and is in a region with deep military and aviation heritage. The installation is part of Joint Base Langley–Eustis, which links the Air Force and Army under one joint command. The base’s waterfront setting provides direct access to large training ranges over the Atlantic and makes it a central node in the defense network stretching from Norfolk Naval Station and Naval Air Station Oceana to Fort Eustis and the shipyards at Newport News.
Langley is one of the oldest continuously active air bases in the world, first established in 1916. It was an early site of Army aviation testing and remains linked to the birth of American airpower. NASA’s Langley Research Center borders the base, reflecting a century-long partnership between military aviation and aerospace innovation. This relationship has created ongoing collaboration in areas like flight testing, materials research, and unmanned systems.
Virginia hosts several key installations and legal centers, and Langley is central to that network. From Joint Base Andrews, Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling, and the Pentagon to smaller Air Force detachments throughout the DC region, this part of the country attracts close attention from the Office of Special Trial Counsel (OSTC). This is especially true for bases along the I-64 corridor, where Air Force and joint command operations are tightly linked.
High-Profile Cases: Our Strategy for Managing Public Attention
Q: As Langley AFB UCMJ Lawyers, how do you handle sensitive or high-profile cases?
A: Quietly. Unless there is a strong tactical reason to do otherwise, and that is extremely rare, we keep the case entirely off the radar.
Our Standard: We do not issue press statements. We do not seek headlines. We do not turn clients into public examples. Our goal is to avoid unnecessary noise, minimize exposure, and protect the client’s privacy. That comes from experience, not showboating.
The Necessity of Silence: Cases related to classified material, sexual misconduct, or early-stage investigations require focus, caution, and absolute control. Our approach is to do the work, protect the client, and avoid public attention. It’s what we’re known for, and it’s what most serious clients want who need to get out of trouble and continue their career.
Why Langley Is a High-Risk Environment
Langley’s placement in the region puts it under greater observation. OSTC prosecutors and senior JAGs often handle Langley cases directly due to its visibility and the sheer density of military and legal institutions in the National Capital Region (NCR).
Airmen at Langley aren’t being singled out. But they are being watched more closely, especially when the case has national interest or command sensitivity. That is why it is vital to work with a lawyer who already knows the key figures in the Air Force across the D.C. area, has navigated these types of “fishbowl” cases, and can respond strategically.
The Baker’s Dozen: What to Keep in Mind If You’re Accused of Sexual Assault
- Memory is reconstruction, not replay. What people remember is built, not retrieved.
- Confidence is not accuracy. A witness can be sure and still be wrong.
- Stories evolve with each telling. It’s inevitable.
- Alcohol and perceived trauma distort recall. Both make false certainty feel real.
- Confabulation fills gaps with fiction that sounds true. It’s guessing disguised as memory.
- A blackout is amnesia, not unconsciousness. People can act, speak, and later remember nothing.
- Fragmented memories get glued together from guesses. The seams are invisible, even to the storyteller.
- Emotion proves emotion, not crime. Distress after the fact is not evidence of guilt.
- Panels and juries must be taught to separate sympathy from proof.
- Bias drives belief. Your attorney needs to understand cognitive error.
- Hindsight rewrites ordinary behavior as warning signs. The past gets edited to match the present accusation.
- “Why would she lie?” has many answers.
- An accuser probably has a lot of people filling her head with borrowed certainty.
The “Felony” Arena: The General Court-Martial’s Permanent Consequences
The military doesn’t classify cases as misdemeanors or felonies, but a General Court-Martial is the military equivalent of a felony. This is the top level of military trial. General Courts-Martial are used for serious charges such as sexual assault, child exploitation, domestic violence, and other major UCMJ violations. Almost all officer trials are sent here regardless of the allegation. GCMs are the OSTC’s turf.
Severe Penalties: Penalties can be extreme, including years in prison or even life. Civilian courts will usually classify a General Court-Martial conviction as a felony.
Sex Offense Registration: The Department of Defense shares these outcomes with civilian databases, and conviction for a sex offense will trigger sex offender registration just like in civilian court.
Misdemeanor Severity: Why the Special Court-Martial Is Career-Ending
A Special Court-Martial is the military’s version of a misdemeanor trial. The maximum confinement at a Special is 12 months.
Career Damage: A conviction at a Special Court-Martial can appear on your civilian criminal record and might be treated as a misdemeanor. Punishments can include confinement, forfeitures, or a bad-conduct discharge.
The Truth: While the sentence limits are lower than at a General Court-Martial, the impact is still major. No experienced defense lawyer treats a Special with less importance than a General; it is a lethal threat to your career and civilian employment.
Pre-Game Defense: The Preliminary Hearing
It isn’t a trial. It’s a screening. A Preliminary Hearing Officer (PHO), a senior JAG or sometimes a military judge, reviews the case, hears arguments, and recommends whether the case should proceed. The focus is narrow:
- Is there probable cause?
- Are the charges legally sufficient?
- Should the case go to trial?
The Supposedly Low Bar
Probable cause is not guilt. It’s barely suspicion dressed up as law: the allegation might be true. That’s why people talk about the “low bar” the prosecution has to clear at this hearing. Some inexperienced lawyers tell clients to waive the hearing because it’s a waste of time. Don’t do that unless you get a tactical advantage out of it.
The Defense Advantage
Even without witnesses, the hearing is a live-fire exercise in persuasion and reconnaissance. The goal isn’t to disprove probable cause. The goal is to get the PHO to say, on the record, that the government will struggle to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt at trial.
OSTC doesn’t care much about probable cause. OSTC cares about conviction rates. If the PHO raises doubts about the government’s ability to win at trial, that assessment helps. It goes to OSTC’s math and can influence whether they keep the case or send it back down the chain. That’s why you need to look at it as a reasonable doubt hearing, not probable cause.
The hearing is also a diplomatic tool. It puts everyone in the same room: your attorney, the prosecutors, the PHO, and sometimes command representatives. It’s a chance to establish a communication hierarchy, read personalities, and create rapport. Sometimes we present exculpatory or favorable information that shifts the tone. Sometimes we don’t need to. Either way, the hearing creates leverage that doesn’t exist if you waive it.
Article 120: Belief isn’t Memory, Memory Isn’t Truth
The Nature of Recollection
Human memory doesn’t work like a recording device. It doesn’t capture and replay; it rebuilds. Each time a memory is recalled, the brain reassembles fragments, some from the original experience, some from emotions, and some from outside influence. Over time, those reconstructions drift. An account may grow more detailed and more confident, even as it moves farther from what actually occurred. Investigators, friends, or digital traces can all supply new information that becomes part of the remembered story.
Filling Gaps with Fiction
Confabulation is the brain’s way of closing gaps. When pieces of memory are missing, it invents plausible ones without realizing it. The result feels complete and true, even though some of the “facts” were never experienced at all. Alcohol, fatigue, or trauma make this process stronger. Someone who is confabulating is not lying; they are remembering an illusion built from partial data. Their sincerity is real; the accuracy is not. That’s why juries often find these stories persuasive even when they collapse under scrutiny.
Blackouts and the Illusion of Continuity
An alcohol blackout is not unconsciousness, it’s a failure of capture. The person remains awake, talking, and interacting, but the hippocampus stops recording new memories. There are full blackouts, where nothing is stored, and partial ones, where random fragments survive. When the brain later tries to reconstruct those missing hours, it relies on guesswork, emotion, and what others report. The result is a seamless narrative that feels whole, but isn’t.
When Emotion Writes the Past
After a disorienting or ambiguous sexual encounter, emotional shock and guilt can interact with memory in powerful ways. A person who wakes up uneasy and uncertain may begin to interpret the event through a new emotional lens. Confirmation bias filters in only the details that fit that feeling. Hindsight bias rewrites earlier moments as warning signs that were supposedly ignored. What emerges is not a deliberate falsehood, but an emotionally reinforced story that feels true to the teller, and devastating to the accused.
The Defender’s Duty: Who is the Primary Client in a Case Against a Child?
The primary client is the human being accused of committing the crime. But the defense attorney’s duty also extends to defending the integrity of the Constitution, the military justice system, and the criminal defense bar itself. Only by doing strong work for the client can an attorney stand up for the integrity of these broader principles.
There are challenges. The attorney’s primary struggle is often psychological compartmentalization. Many law firms won’t take cases of this nature because they don’t want to review the evidence, wrestle with the emotional dynamics, or confront a child who might be incorrect or lying.
This work requires reviewing deeply traumatic material (CSAM, graphic medical examiner reports). The attorney must process this material not as a horrified spectator, but as a detached, analytical professional.
The attorney must remove all personal moral judgment to advise the client effectively. The focus must be relentlessly on strategy, assessing the technical defects and constitutional violations, without allowing personal feelings about the evidence to interfere.
Mitigation Work: There might come a time when the lawyer must handle mitigation advocacy, presenting the defendant’s background and circumstances without minimizing the criminal act, to build a case for sentence reduction. This work begins very early in the case, regardless of the odds of an acquittal, and requires developing two cases (and contradictory thought processes) at the same time.
Q: Dismantling Child Testimony Without Alienating the Judge and Panel
A: Anyone who has ever been a child knows a child can lie. Sometimes it’s an invention born of fear or resentment; sometimes it’s an adult’s script repeated in a smaller voice. The lawyer’s duty is not to guess motive but to test reliability. Every story has to be examined as evidence, not as innocence.
Cross-examination begins from neutrality. You do not assume honesty or deceit. You work through structure: what was seen, what was said, when, and under whose influence. Each question isolates one variable: memory gaps, coaching, misinterpretation, attention seeking. The craft lies in exposing these faults without appearing to punish the witness for them.
The goal is to move jurors from feeling sympathy to noticing uncertainty. Once uncertainty appears, reason can survive. Emotional capital is finite. The purpose is not to break a child but to break the illusion that children always tell the truth.
Our Firm’s Core Advantage: Federal Experience and UCMJ History
We entered the JAG Corps in 2001, just after the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and New York City. We spent our entire time on active duty doing UCMJ cases, focusing on courts-martial, and never took an administrative assignment. We have continued to do UCMJ defense without a pause ever since then, having opened this firm in 2006 to represent members from all branches.
- Federal Court Expertise: The UCMJ system has recently undergone a massive overhaul to bring it more into alignment with the federal criminal system. We adapted immediately, since we have been working in federal criminal court for the past 20 years as well. The new system other attorneys are learning is already familiar territory for us.
- Depth of Practice: Our career has been dedicated to representing military members of all ranks, against the most serious allegations, including Article 117a, 120, 120b, 134, 119b, and others.
Expectation Management: Our Flat Fee and Direct Access Commitment
We don’t use call centers or chatbots to screen clients. You’ll work directly, and only, with a highly experienced UCMJ defense attorney.
- Flat Fee Structure: We charge flat fees rather than hourly rates. This eliminates the financial anxiety for you and creates a case-focused relationship.
- Total Coverage: That flat fee covers everything for that stage: texts, phone calls, emails, legal research, drafting, negotiations, and court appearances. We never want you to feel restrained by finances if you have a concern.
- Travel: If we need to travel to Langley for a hearing or court date, travel expenses are billed separately.
Call a Langley AFB UCMJ Lawyer Now
If you’re facing UCMJ action, under investigation, or preparing for court-martial at Langley Air Force Base, or anywhere in southeastern Virginia’s military community, call 800-319-3134 for a free consultation. We’ve represented Airmen at Langley for more than two decades and know how to handle cases in the National Capital Region.